pdf 31 MB - BSBI Archive

86 A MONOGRAPH OF THE GENUS PODAXIS DESV. (= PODAXON PR.).
wall ; these are homologous with the so-called sterile basidia or
paraphyses ; at this stage the peridium breaks away from the stem
at its lower point of attachment, the margin being irregularly torn,
when it resembles a half-expanded agaric ; eventually the whole of
the dry and brittle peridium breaks away, and the stem remains,
with its blackish-brown mass of spores and capillitium resembling
a bulrush, the final dispersion of the spores being effected
and rain.
by wind
Of the six remaining species, I have only had an opportunity of
examining dry herbarium specimens, and Dr. E. Fischer, from an
examination of similar material collected by Dr. Schinz in Southwest
Africa,* states that in Podaxon carcinomalis the spores are
borne at the apices of basidia, as described by Prof. De Bary.j Now
DeBary's remarks on this point are as follows:—
" Specimens of
Podaxon pistiUaris, or an allied species, which were younger, but
had reached their full size,| showed the cavity of the peridium
filled with a gleba containing an extremely large number of narrow
and very sinuous chambers, very thin tramal-plates, and a dense
hymenial layer consisting entirely of stout four-spored basidia.
The capillitium-threads were already discernible as broad but thinwalled
hyphfe passing on one side into the wall of the peridium, on
the other into the columella, and in the gleba running as in Lycoperdon,
partly in the tramal-plates, partly transversely through the
chambers. "§ The above detailed account proves conclusively that
the specimen examined by De Bary was not a species of Podaxon.
As already stated, the gleba in the last-named genus is from the
earliest condition entirely destitute of chambers bounded by welldefined
tramal-plates, as shown in immature herbarium-specimens,
which are by no means uncommon ; m the Kew Herbarium alone
there are over fifty specimens of the various species, many very
young, and in every species there is the same spongy gleba, composed
for the most part, or in some species entirely, of ascogenous
hyphaB, which are arranged in small, irregular, concentrated portions,
connected by straggling hyphse ; between these latter the
elongated branches bearing the clusters of asci grow, originating
from the hyplife of the denser portions ; there is no hymenium in
the sense of a tramal-plate, and having its surface covered by a
dense hymenial layer consisting entirely of stout four-spored
basidia, as in the specimen examined by De Bary, which nevertheless
describes exactly the structure presented by authentic
specimens of Cauloglossum transversarium Fries, a fungus bearing in
vertical section a close superficial resemblance to an immature
Podaxis, but which on microscopic examination proves to belong
to the ILjmenoijastreiB, and characterized by the clavate form, more
or less attenuated downwards into a stem, which continues through
the gleba as a central axis, the gleba consisting of numerous very
* Hedw. 1889, Heft. i. pp. 1—8, pi. i.
t Vergl. Morphol. u. Biol, der Pilze (1884), p. 343,
\ In the Herbarium at Berlin, marked Schweinfurth, Iter. 2, No. 275,
§ ' Fungi, Mycetozoa, and Bacteria,' p. 318. Engl. Ed.